I was thinking recently that there must be a hell of a lot of abandoned mine structures in Scotland including, presumably, existing underground tunnels. Those would be interesting to see. However, I've not really been able to find a lot about where there are still mines in Scotland nor about whether or not entering a mine causes instantaneous death. I am aware they are very dangerous particularly coal mines. Does anyone know anything about which kinds of mines are safe if any and where exactly there exists mines?Has anyone ever been in one?

I've been to Birkhill clay mine which is open to the public for visits, but never even seen any apart from that.

The only mine I am aware of is actually quite close to my house on the south side of Glasgow, near Darnley. If you follow the road next to the 'Ashoka at the Mill' resturant, it runs for approximately 1 mile before reaching a dam/reservoir - just before this, on the right hand side, there is a large area fenced off. I have no idea what kind of mine was located here, or when it was in use, but there certainly used to be a fair few warning signs at various points alongside the fence. These signs are no longer there, I assume they have either decayed or been vandalised, but the metal supports are still present where the signs originally were. Apart from that, the area appears to have remained untouched, i.e. bit of a jungle now!

Not sure if this is the same area, but there's an old shaft in the woodland by the Barrhead Dams ( Also quite near Darnley. )

Me and some mates discovered it years ago - to access it, going from the Southpark Village end of the road, you have to cross the railing-less bridge that's over in the area behind the ruined house, and follow the burn on the side opposite the road, until you come to a rocky outcrop
This is quite near to the waterfall that comes down from the dams themselves ( More on that later. )

There's a small cave on the right hand side under the outcrop, and this joins onto a roughly 45* angled man-made and wooden-shored shaft inside the hill.

There's not much of it ( Probably less now, 8 years on! ) but it was interesting to explore.

Also, now sadly gone, is a natural cavern that was utilised as a water pipe to expell overflow from the two "pit" pools up at the top of the first hill.

The pools are now covered with wooden slats, so enter the middle tower, CAREFULLY climb down the hole there and out the side of the shaft ( It continues below you ) into the "pit pool".
There's a rectangular opening to your right - climb through this and you'll end up in a vertical cave about 10m high. The bottom end has now been sealed with concrete but you used to be able to go all the way down and out.

If anyone finds a purple maglite checking this out, I'd like it back please

I was brought up in south nitshill and spent my whole childhood exploring all over the surrounding countryside Brock burn barrhead dams craigie mountain and the woodlands adjacent. The mine in waulkmill glen beside the waterfall was fully explored by myself and my brothers during the lates 60's and early seventies. At that time the undergrowth in the glen was not as lush as it is nowadays. The mine itself used to run inabout 100 metres and then take a sharp turn left maybe 50metres or so before petering out owing to landslides. You could crawl up wee secondary shafts off the main mine which were being worked then by some poorer residents of nitshill area at the time. Free coal was free coal. The whole area is to put it bluntly a minefield. There was a host of old mine shafts off the left hand side of Corselet Road past the bridge which crosses the Brock burn and after the sharp turn to the left followed by a turn to the right and straight on to the danm gates. there was a farm here occupied by the simpson family who went to school with me. Some of these mines were in fact massive caverns tall enough for a bus. You could see the coal seams clearly. This area was also used as landfill and the mines were sealed around the mid seventies when waste of some sort was pumped into them. Anybody owning a hoose up there should be careful.
I worked as a kid with my brother for over five years in the Darnley Mill Farm now the Ashoka for the last tenant farmer there Tommy Stevenson. Anybody wanting any info on that area i will be glad to help if I can.

There are mines in Garthamlock, on Gartloch Rd where it meets Auchinlea Rd. Im not sure how safe they are tho... you can actually see the deppressions in the ground where the old shorings have failed! Guess thats why they never built on it, although I do remember the carnival used to set itself up there when I was a kid, before it moved to Craigend.

There is an interesting bit of land right beside Hartwood nurses building. It covers at least an acre which is surrounded by a victorian era wrought iron fence by the looks of it. There are modern signs warning of open shafts posted around it. I've only seen it from the train though. It has a lot of mature pine trees growing within this area but you can make out some large foundations, possibly a former winding house? they appear to be quite deep!. The site is very overgrown so you can only make these out during the winter months due to the vegetation dying back.

I have been interested in locating where old coal mines were for some time. This started as a project as part of research for the railway history of Airdrie and Coatbridge but has since spread to surrounding area including Glasgow. It is a project which would take many years to complete in it's entirety so I have tried to do it a bit at a time. The emergence of Live Local and Old Maps has made the search much easier but there are many gaps.
From a list on the http://www.nmrs.co.uk/nationalised.htm site there would appear to have been only eight Glasgow mines that survived into nationalisation in 1947 (one, Langside, has no location it is assumed by association with the name), the others are confirmed on the Glasgow Story. I have managed to locate three and would like to initiate a discussion to locate the others and generally discuss coal mining.

The list is..

Bardykes (Flemington) closed October 1962:
North Side of A724 Hamilton Road between Cambuslang and Blantyre grid ref NS 673 587 now a Sand Quarry/Opencast development
Garscube (Glasgow) closed August 1966:
Immediately to south west of Western Necropolis grid ref NS 572 696 now a Local Site of Importance for Nature Conservation
Blantyre (Newton) closed July 1957: location unknown
Blantyreferme No.3 (Newton) closed August 1964: location unknown
Blantyreferme Nos. 1 & 2 (Newton) closed April 1962:
Immediate east of Blantyre Farm Road to south side of Glasgow to Motherwell Main Railway Line grid ref NS 684 606 now Waste land part / industrial site
Coatspark (Cambuslang) closed May 1958 (aka Gateside Mine?):
If so South side of Newton to Kirkhill Railway Line NS 653 601 now new Housing Development
Greenlees (Cambuslang) closed February 1957 Temporary drift mine opened 1948
Langside closed October 1949

Most of the West End is built on old mine workings, closed long before nationalisation with no maps available.

I've heard it said that there are whole streets like Great George Street where you won't get a mortgage because of subsidence - sad eh? - some of the most desireable real estate in Glasgow is also the most unstable !

Not such a property hot spot, but Wishaw is much the same - you can see gaps where some houses have been knocked down because they were sinking so badly. When they were building houses on the Wishaw High School site, the machines to pump cement into the mines were there for ages.

Summerston is apparently built on top of coal mines, or so my father told me. He was surprised when I told him they were building there (back in the 1970s). He was 91 when he died in 2003 and I'm not sure if it was within his memory or what he was told.
You could try trawling through the Coal Board website:
http://www.coal.gov.uk/

shug wrote:Most of the West End is built on old mine workings, closed long before nationalisation with no maps available.

I've heard it said that there are whole streets like Great George Street where you won't get a mortgage because of subsidence - sad eh? - some of the most desireable real estate in Glasgow is also the most unstable !

I was told from older relatives that there used to be
a mine in the Netherton area of Anniesland. Probably
a whole load of houses, just waiting to get swallowed up

"The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led." - Edgar Allan Poe